Coeur d'Alene Waters, page 35
He closed his eyes, a sudden vertigo overwhelming him. He had made a horrible mistake, he wanted to beg for forgiveness, but it was too late for that now. There was nothing to be done to redeem the time. Maybe he could do the next best thing.
When his eyes opened again, Irene reached out to the phone on the table and spoke to him. “She knows something.”
“Who?” he said. But then he was looking out the window. Her house was floating over Lake Coeur d’Alene. And he knew that Arlen’s little girl was waiting for him down there.
In the sky were small dark specks, bats that flitted over the surface of the lake. He watched them move against the fading light in the west. Darkness covered his vision as the phone buzzed under his hand. He turned back once more, but Irene had disappeared.
Flickering in a submarine light was the little girl who had waited for him on Five Mile Prairie, who had been at the funeral. Arlen’s girl. The phone buzzed under his hand again, but he questioned her insistently.
“You aren’t dead, are you?”
“Not yet,” the little girl whispered. “Not yet.”
Then she said something else to him, a question he could not understand. Sall stirred restlessly beside him in the bed.
Matt lay there for a long hour, waiting for sleep to return. Finally, he got up again and went to the kitchen. The little bottle was right where he’d left it. He could go back, like no time had passed at all. Go right back where he’d started.
He was so sure that he was going to take a drink, that for a moment he didn’t feel her hand slip onto his shoulder. Finally, as he brought the bottle toward his lips, she said his name.
Sall’s voice calmed the shiver that had come to his face. His body burned with a sudden heat. When he opened his eyes, desperation overwhelmed him, as if he were falling off a cliff. He tried to pull himself into the present, gripping the edge of the table hard enough to hear his knuckles crack. He did not look at her, staring instead at the small bottle in his hand.
“Matt,” she said, whispering to him. She rubbed her hand across his shoulders.
Matt began to cry, groaning as each spasm cut out of him.
“All those years wasted. I just read Irene’s letters. She didn’t—she didn’t hate me when she died. I did nothing to her. It was an accident. I thought I killed her. But . . .”
“Jesus, Matt, you carried this around—you lived with this, and you never told me?”
Matt turned toward her, his face streaming. “I couldn’t. I thought I had an affair, or something. But I didn’t—it was all a lie they told me. I lived a lie. I thought . . .”
Sall shook her head, shock breaking across her face.
“Coffee,” she said. “I’ll make us some coffee.” She ran water in the sink, poured ground beans into the filter. The aroma of it was sharp, it cut through the anxious fog. Sall put a hand on his shoulder, quieting him as he sobbed.
“And Pop—how could he have lived like that for decades? His whole life, a lie.”
Matt stared blankly down at the tabletop, his eyes fogged with tears. “And now it’s mine. I have to live with Pop’s goddamned secrets forever.”
Sall took a swallow and pushed a mug into his hands. There was a pause as he gulped hungrily at the coffee.
“No,” she said finally. “You don’t have to.”
“What do you mean?” Matt took a breath, the air painful in his lungs. “You’ve made it this far.” She turned toward him. “I’m not going to let you fall now. I know you.”
He shook his head and stood from the chair. He curled his hard arms close around her warmth, pressing them into the soft places, holding on as tight as he could.
“You know me.” Matt looked into her face. He rubbed an arm across his reddened eyes. “And damn, you still believe in me. Jesus Christ, you are beautiful.”
She laughed hoarsely as he cradled her in a rough and desperate grip. Her mouth tasted sweet and bitter, sugar and black coffee.
If now the dead of this fire should awaken
and I should be stopped beside a cross,
I would no longer be nervous if asked
the first and last question of life,
‘How did it happen?’
—Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire
OUTSIDE THE church, the crowd moved in an unseen current, clumps of black-clad bodies drifting together and apart. The soul of the Silver Valley was here: every remaining man who had mucked out a stope in the Sunshine, every union organizer who had held a picket during the Bunker Hill strike, and every mine boss who had ever negotiated on the other side of the table. The crowd was full of men with rough hands, most of them wearing suits that hadn’t seen the light of day in ten years, tiny holes eaten by moths in the elbows and at the hems, the insidious grit of the mines still caked minutely in creases on their necks, behind their ears. There was a subdued hum as families met each other in the street, sounds of mutual consolation.
As the throng poured into the church, Matt saw Betty Bowman. She seemed to be caught by the swell of the crowd, confused as she looked from face to face, recognizing almost no one. He saw that in her confusion, she was slowly losing her grip on the small girl by her side. Quietly, Matt stepped around the family section and into the aisle, avoiding for a moment the many outstretched hands and expressions of sympathy that immediately surrounded him. As the throng eddied back and forth, the small girl stumbled, and then he almost lost her behind the pews. When he reached down, she took hold of his rough woolen coat immediately, with relief. She knew him from before.
“Mamma?” she said. “Where’s my mamma?”
“Hi there—we’ll find her.” Then he blinked in surprise. “You’re talking now.” She nodded. Then, as Betty Bowman came up to them, the girl was suddenly embarrassed. She reached out and grabbed hold of her mother, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder.
“Oh, thank you,” said Betty. Then she spoke to the girl. “You remember Lieutenant Worthson, don’t you, honey?”
Matt felt something give in him at her words, his eyes crinkling with the momentary pain. “I’m not a lieutenant anymore. But I do thank you for coming,” he added. “You didn’t have to drive all this way. Thank you.”
“We came, like all these others, out of respect,” Betty said. “You’ve been so helpful to us, Lieutenant.”
“No.” He shook his head again. “No, I haven’t really been much help at all to you. But thank you, thank you so much for coming.”
Then she waved good-bye as the crowd moved again. Matt began to shake hands with people, but he didn’t feel a thing, he was talking without caring what he was saying, listening to words he didn’t comprehend and then nodding in agreement as he took his cue from the tone of a voice. He hardly heard a word anyone said. He watched the remainder of the Bowman family move away into the crowd, watched all the people find their places. Sall and Doug were already sitting near the front, talking quietly to other relatives. His son had flown in the night before, along with a cousin from Oregon, but even that had not lifted the sense of numb unreality that enveloped him.
Yet when he saw Russ sitting serenely on the left side of the church, something got to him. His heart seemed to catch for a moment, and he couldn’t seem to take a breath. What had Russ done to him?
Russell White had won the election, and he looked it. He had a fresh haircut, a sleek look. His suit was freshly pressed. The new sheriff. Yet Russ did not look anywhere near Matt’s direction. He acted as if he had other things on his mind. Valerie Herrick was whispering urgently in his ear, under the newly trimmed sideburns. He glanced from side to side as she spoke, recognizing political players and corporate friends, grinning vaguely when people approached him to shake his hand, offering their congratulations and support. Russ was here, but he was not here.
The church was full, but Matt felt himself to be suddenly marooned, stripped of all words. He stood there alone, struggling to catch a breath. From their seats in the pews, people looked up at him strangely as he stood.
The minister came to the front, the organist began to play, and gradually, the people subsided around Russ and Valerie. In his last glance around, before he took his seat, Russ saw Matt staring at him. He gave a desultory smile, a grin and a shrug, and then—as if remembering belatedly Matt’s place here today—a solemn sudden nod, a grimace Matt wondered might be his substitute for sympathy. Valerie touched his arm, and Russ turned away once more, giving one last handshake to a supporter before he sank into his seat.
For a moment, Matt was on his feet alone, looking around at the sea of mourning black, the bright glow of the colors in the church windows, the myriad faces that already seemed strangely faded in the stained glass light, and the worn haggard face of Pop, resting now placidly on a cream-colored pillow, sur rounded on four sides by the darkly burnished wood of a coffin. Underneath the box, the floor was filled with flowers.
Finally, as the organ swelled in prelude, Sall pulled him down into his seat.
It seemed hours later that Smitty rose and began to talk. At first, his voice was tinny, it echoed through the underpowered speaker.
“My name is Reverend Ed Smith. Most of you know me as Smitty.” He spread his hands out, as if to apologize. “I don’t know exactly why Stanley wanted me to officiate at his funeral, but here I am. I’d like to thank Father Mel for letting me speak here, for letting all of us take over St. Alphonsus this afternoon for this very special service. And now that I’ve thanked the Catholics, I’ve just got to take off this monkey suit.”
A nervous chuckle ran through the crowd as he shrugged off a sports jacket and rubbed his face. His eyes were bloodshot. He laid his jacket over a seat and then walked back to the lectern.
“I gotta tell you, it’s a hard thing for me to do, being here in front of you all. As some of you know, I’ve had a long road coming back to the pulpit. And Stanley knew it would be hard for me to do.” The man paused and sighed. “But I think he wanted me here because Stanley believed in second chances. He served the God of Second Chances.”
Matt felt his thoughts begin to wander at Smitty’s last words. Would Pop have a second chance? Would he get up again and start over? Where was he now?
Smitty seemed to know what he was thinking. He stepped out of the lectern and moved toward the flowers. “I want you to know something,” Smitty said. He walked across the steps and came close to the cream-colored cloth where the old man lay.
“Stanley would want you to know that he’s not here right now. His body may be here, but he’s not.” Smitty pointed. “Right now, he’s standing before that most merciful of judges, his Savior Jesus, who gives him both judgment and grace. Without deceit and without shield, he stands now before his Lord and Maker. He’s up there.”
Surreptitiously, Matt glanced at the ceiling. Pop was somewhere, but he sure wasn’t up there. The wood was too dark to see. It looked to be the same wood as the coffin.
Why couldn’t he focus his thoughts? Could he still say what he had to say, with Russ here? All the years of lies seemed to be folded on top of him, they wrapped him like a shroud.
Smitty was still talking at the front of the church. He was moving his arms now, starting to raise his voice, animating himself as he came toward some kind of glory. Matt could see damp circles under his arms, and he wondered if he’d sweat too, when it came his turn. Smitty talked for a long time, then they bowed their heads and prayed. Afterward, Smitty looked at a card he held in his hand.
“Now I’d like to introduce several who will give remembrances of Stanley,” he said. “Mr. Tom Dexter will speak, followed by the mining union’s local chapter president, Roger Jorgensen. And then Stan’s son, Matt, will conclude our service today.” He looked at the audience and nodded when someone agreed with him. Then he took a deep breath, and seemed to look straight at Matt, an edge of concern in his gaze. “First will be Tom Dexter, operational manager for many years of the Sunshine Mine, and now serving Hecla Mine over in Silverton as vice president of mining operations. Mr. Dexter, sir.”
Someone clapped in the pews behind him. Neither Matt or Sall raised their hands in applause, and the scattered clapping died quickly. The mining managers could speak at the funeral, but they did not speak for Pop. No one could now. Except for his son.
When Smitty called Matt’s name, it seemed to him that his stomach had turned into lead, a heavy thing that weighed him down. He could hardly move, and when he stood, the windows swam in his gaze, all the colors bleeding together, darkness threatening to cover him.
He closed his eyes and hesitated, breathing deeply. But then he put one foot in front of the other, and when he got to the black microphone, he steeled himself, holding on to the cold metal, tapping a finger nervously on the mouthpiece. He could not look at the crowd. All those expectant faces would make him change what he had to say. Then he began to talk, and gradually he lifted his eyes to take in the people in the church.
“I haven’t always had my father’s faith,” Matt began. “I don’t know if I believe as deeply as he did, or as faithfully, or pray as strongly. Few of us do. Yet Stan would say that winning the Purple Heart in the Pacific didn’t make him brave, he would say that dragging a miner out of a collapsed chute after an air blast didn’t make him brave, surviving the Sunshine disaster and helping others out of that hellhole didn’t make him brave, and he would even say that holding the picket line strong with the United Mine Workers union, even that didn’t make him brave. He always felt that the bravest thing you can do is stand up for what is right. That’s what he would have said.”
Matt paused, and felt his voice crack under the strain of what he would say next. “Yet that was not what his life was about. I’m here today to tell you the truth about Stan Worthson.
“I know many of you revered my father for his courage in surviving the Sunshine Mine disaster.” Matt paused and looked around, feeling the air of the space close around him, constricting him, suffocating him in its fearful embrace. “But since my father did survive, I feel as if I should tell you what I now know about that disaster in which ninety-one members of our community perished: fathers, husbands, brothers.
“Sixteen years ago, my father was credited with saving nearly two hundred men by getting them out of the Sunshine Mine ahead of himself, at great risk to his personal safety. He worked as a hoistman all during the time the smoke was pouring through the mine, and then when he went back down to get one last load, we thought we’d never see him again. Yet there is more to the story. A man you all know here in the Silver Valley, Mr. William Herrick, he knew the truth as well, and he has corroborated this for me. In fact, my father helped to cause the Sunshine Mine fire.”
Matt was startled to hear people gasp around him, a sound he had not expected. He waited until the sound died away, and then he looked down at his notes, held tight in his trembling fingers.
“Before he died, I discovered—partially through my father’s attempt to share it with me—that Stan worked secretly for many years as a saboteur for Mr. Herrick’s mine, the Bunker Hill. In 1972, my father concealed a series of incriminating documents inside the Sunshine Mine. In the process, he killed a man, and for some reason, he started a fire deep in the mine. It happened near the Number Five shaft—and that fire was not put out for several weeks.”
Again, Matt heard the people take in their breath, a muttering coming across the crowd, as if there were a distant wave approaching. “This secret fire—fed by the boxes of documents—smoldered deep in the mine, and eventually, because my father did not raise an alarm about the dead man and the fire, it became a deep ground burn. My father’s mistake—his greatest crime— was that he caused the Sunshine Mine disaster.”
Matt wiped furiously at his face, rubbing his eyes, pushing himself onward against the rising tide of sound. “It’s true that my father saved many men as a hoistman that day, but they wouldn’t have needed saving except for the fire he lit weeks before. Before his death, Stan was not able to tell me everything about what he did or why he did it, but I was able to discover every detail on my own. I know him now.”
Matt gulped. If he paused now he would start to cry. “My father must have felt terribly guilty about his actions his entire life. I can only believe that because he followed that mistake by betraying his fellows in the union, paying back a debt by working secretly for Mr. Herrick his whole life, breaking confidences that were not his to break, and breaking trust with nearly everyone he knew. Yet I feel certain that in his last days my father wanted to admit to these terrible mistakes—both to the fire, and also to providing the information that helped destroy the union here in the Valley. I am certain that he wanted to say this, but could not do so because one of his last strokes left him unable to communicate. So I’m left here today, in his stead, to tell you the truth.”
As he kept speaking, Matt felt something solidify in him, a flooding rush of strength. He looked out at the crowded mass of the Silver Valley. They were listening to him. He wasn’t afraid anymore.
“I know as well that the man who killed Arlen Bowman was also in some way involved in setting the fire that caused that disaster. I know this fact because last summer, after his first heart attack, my father called up Reverend Arlen Bowman, as many of us have in our times of need. Last summer, my father confessed to him his involvement in the Sunshine fire, and because of that confession—because of a story Arlen held in trust—Arlen was killed. Yet now, my father is dead, Arlen is dead, the man who lit the fire with my father—and killed Arlen—is dead as well, and so are others who may have shed light on all this. It is time to forgive. Forgive them all, both the living and the dead.”
Matt was surprised by the sudden tears that came over him. His mouth twisted as he spoke, a sob shattering his words. “In the end, I am here today to tell you that I have forgiven my father for what he did, and for how he did it.” Matt looked down at the floor. He did not know how he could go on.
